How people tolerate this? - Nikos Anagnostou

Tip of the iceberg in my opinion. The government doesn't have any clue how to right the ship and apparently letting the free market self-correct won't be an option for another trillion or two. - Wayne Schulz

Why is anyone surprised? - Warner Crocker

I think I'll make a widget from the info in this story -- find pictures of the execs, note how much they pocketed, and make a slide show, gallery of shame. - Amyloo

@Amyloo - guessing it will be a big slide show - Dave Hodson

I'm not surprised. But I am thoroughly disgusted. :( - Kevin C. Tofel

I'm not surprised either. I can't wait to see what the Auto execs will do with their bailout money. I'll bet it'll be worse. - imabonehead

This is what pisses me off! - Michael Fidler

BAIL OUT FAIL! - Mathew™ aka Youngblood

I'm feeling like the death penalty might not be such a bad idea after all. - Dave Winer

Confiscation of all personal assets and labor camps -- you know that these thoughts have to be running through the minds of quite a few people. That is why the groundwork is being prepared for permanent martial law. - Sean McBride

It's what? 1/350th of the 700billion bailout? It's still a huge amount. But looks slightly different in context. - Roberto Bonini

The paradox of the ardent capitalist: they hate the bailouts and love the free market, yet applaud when an exec gets a huge payout in the middle of a crisis. "He deserves it," is something I've heard more times than I care to remember. Christ -- the cognitive dissonance these people endure must be deafening. - Jeff Ventura

This is bad public PR but it's mostly a miscommunication. We want the bailout to turn these companies around. Yet in the middle of that effort, other institutions will be trying to recruit their best executives. So you have to reward the talent to keep them. Yet people see this retention effort as part of a process of rewarding failure or misusing cash, when this retention might allow the company to succeed and pay back their debt to the US. - Andrew

Roberto -- give me the $1.6 billion instead. Thank you! - Dave Winer

Dave - Something tells me you, with all of your skills, don't have the knowledge base to turn around a multibillion dollar bank. So maybe we should spend that 1/350th of the bailout on talent. - Andrew

The people who created this mess are talented? - Sean McBride

Headbanger -- so the pilots, having drunkenly crashed & burned their airplanes into the ground, and having made exorbitant sums in the process, now need EVEN MORE exorbitant sums, so the *other* airlines won't hire them? Am I getting this right? - Karim

think about it from the compensation comittees' point of view. Our bank received a huge pile of unexpected (and essentially unrestriced) cash to do with as we please while this CEO was in place whether he/she was responsibile for it or not. That is a much bigger "accomplishment" than most of these CEOs could claim for anything prior, hence, they "deserve" their piece of the action. Our system is essentially designed to produce and applaud this kind of despicable behavior. - Mark Schulz

Yeah Dave -- destroying the world economy should be left to the trained experts. ;-) - Karim

All of you are working under the assumption that 1) these executives created this mess. 2) that all bank executives are equally responsible. Neither one is guaranteed to be true. But yes, at the worst bank out there is a really talented guy. Countrywide had one guy, just one, whom any other bank would be lucky to get. Without him BAC, which bought Countrywide, loses 3 million a year forever. But if they pay him 1 Million right now, they keep him. Is that a good deal? - Andrew

this situation just illustrates why everything's such a mess right now: we have a bunch of greedy, amoral jackasses controlling the levers of the global economy, and they're interested in doing nothing except increasing their own fortunes, at everyone else's expense. now maybe this is the way it's always been, but now it's being played out before your eyes. - .LAG liked that

Also worth pointing out, a lot of bank executives aren't what you think. Since financial firms basically payout based on commissions or revenue generated, the only way to reward someone is with bonuses or title promotions. So there will be a number of people who are basically salesmen, the ones who are going to get the money to pay back the US, who have the title of an executive ("Managing Director" or something) who probably received this. They aren't in charge of strategic direction of the firm, thus aren't responsible for causing the mess, but are critical for you, the taxpayer, getting your money back. - Andrew

And the broken record just keeps spinning. http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - michael silverton

Quick comp for a hall of shame widget http://www.sidebarstuff.com/index... - Amyloo

@headbanger, you make some good points, but in the case of bailout funds, i thought that money was being disbursed to help stressed banks repair bad loan portfolios. when you see that this money is going into individuals' pockets -- and bad loans are still sitting out there, ready to go into default -- it's more than troubling. - .LAG liked that

Amyloo, awesome! - imabonehead

@.LAG - I am bothered that the money went to the banks without buying the bad loans off the books. I understand the reasoning, but it basically saved the system and saved the problems.The Fed has been pushing the interest rates down though. There are a lot of banks out there with mortgage rates of less than 5%. Hopefully people will take advantage of that and refinance so we don't have exponentially more defaults. - Andrew

Headbanger, I think you're muddying the waters by talking about retaining "really talented" good guys, salesmen, commissions etc. -- as if there was any sort of transparency or public accountability in the process of deciding who really deserved a bonus. The AP article was specifically referring to "top executive" (CEO/chairman) compensation. The question is whether it is fair for these "top execs" to expect millions in compensation when they have come to the American people BEGGING for money. - Karim

Karim - I think the article was muddying the waters. It mentioned the average paid to bank executives and then mentioned mentioned a series of executives who clearly skewed that average. It mentions Wells Fargo which gave out $20,000 for financial planners, that is a very modest perk and a smart one. Forgive my lack of rage when I see skewed numbers and modest perks. Of course Goldman is blowing money, but I would be surprised if they aren't the first to pay back the loan. The article is a mess that is obviously designed to enrage people like yourself. And also, no one said the talented guys are the good guys. They are just the needed and desired employees. - Andrew

Karim - Just for the record, I think these top executives, not the salesmen or the guys actually valueing and selling the assets that pay back the US, should be entirely paid in stock that they are restricted from selling for 10 years. Not one of them should get a dime until this whole process is over. Plus it would give them an incentive to build a good strong bank that is good for the system and the shareholders, which currently includes the Government. - Andrew

I think the point of mentioning outliers (e.g. "Mr. Jones received $107,275 in compensation for pedicure services") is to point out potential abuses. Questions about the fairness of executive compensation have been around LONG before the economy started to tank. Now that a LOT of taxpayer money is involved, there will be an increased amount of concern. - Karim

Hating myself for having to click "like" on the report about $1.6B goingt to bank execs. - Michael Markman

The titanic economy has struck an iceberg. The American people are largely pragmatic, and if one guy can save the economy, I don't think they will begrudge him $107,275 in pedicures. The problem is that there is this concern that the guys getting pedicures are the SAME ONES responsible for running into the damn iceberg. The question is one of fairness. - Karim

Karim - The problem with this article is that it confuses the top executives of the banks with the guys who do things that really are helping you get your money back. So far about 30 banks have taken Tarp funds. This article mentions 600 executives. That is way beyond the CEOs of these banks or even the top 4 at each TARP bank, yet it makes examples of only those top 4 at banks. If you dislike a lack of transparency, you should hate this article. It is fair to call out the top guys for luxuries in a crisis, but this article throws out the baby with the bath water. - Andrew

The Purpose of a System is What it Does. And what this system has done is to reward those who perpetuated the ultimate con job. By using complex derivatives and measures specifically designed to ignore rather than mitigate risk they managed a scheme that created pay offs by bringing new "investors" into the fold at an ever increasing rate. Guess what - it eventually breaks and only the first in win. There is a word for this when done by one individual, is it different when it is an organization? - David HC Soul

Okay, a little handholding for the benefit of the too busy. We literally can no longer afford to be too busy to fix this http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorule... or in decade-old terms http://www.youtube.com/watch... which have only become further skewed, to the point of the current shipwreck. Titanic is the perfect analogy. Industrial Era Capitalism is 100% sunk. - michael silverton

Once again, it was widely reported in the media of speculation that bailouts weren't being handled well and once again, Americans didn't want to notice. Why complain when this stuff is really all our fault? :) - Patricia

Headbanger, the article says "116 banks" have accepted taxpayer funds (not 30 TARP banks), and the total number of executives was just under 600, so that's roughly the top 5 execs per bank, not the top 20. But this is so much quibbling. While I agree the study needs to be published in detail, it doesn't "throw the baby out with the bathwater" to simply summarize the situation for a news article. Neither is it wrong to suggest that the American public deserves a little more accountability. - Karim

If someone is broke, and you loan them $100 for a bus ticket home, it is a little disconcerting to see them renting a private jet instead. - Karim

FF needs a WTF?! button now - Susan Beebe